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Tom Daley using therapy to cure his fear of clowns

The Olympic diver wants to cure the phobia before it gets too bad

By Steve Brown

Tom Daley is using therapy to cure his fear of clowns.

The Olympic diver – who is expecting his first baby with husband Dustin Lance Black – is hoping to cure his coulrophobia before it “becomes too bad”.

In an interview with the Daily Star, Daley said: “I’m not a fan of clowns – they are my biggest fear.

“I want to try and fix that phobia before it becomes too bad.”

This isn’t the first time the diver used therapy to tackle his phobias after he saw a specialist back in 2014 to cure his fear of the twist dive.

Speaking at the time, Daley – who has just won gold at the Commonwealth Games with partner Dan Goodfellow – said: “The scale of this issue is massive.

“I’m trying every single thing possible to try and get it back to normal. I’m going under different types of therapy.

It is almost trauma therapy – to get myself to process the things that have gone wrong on it to get it to a stage where I can forget about it and feel positive about it.

“I am literally terrified of it. I suppose you could call it a phobia and I don’t know what my heart rate is when I go up there and do it but it’s definitely above 1980, something ridiculous, because it is so terrifying.”

In his defence, who actually likes clowns?